Amerex to put out fires in new armored vehicle

View full sizeThe Trussville company Amerex Corp., best known for making fire extinguishers and other fire protection products, is emerging as a military subcontractor. ( Birmingham News / Hal Yeager) Trussville's Amerex Corp. is emerging as a major military subcontractor after developing a fire suppression system being deployed on U.S. military vehicles often targeted by mines and homemade bombs in the Middle Eastern combat theater.

The new military business has led to full employment at the company best known for making fire extinguishers and other fire-protection products.

Sales of fire extinguishers tend to follow the general economy and growth in new buildings, General Manager Bill Beyer said. So the numbers are down in that business as the economy continues to sputter. Twenty workers volunteered for layoffs last June.

But military sales of special fire suppression systems for armored vehicles are up -- way up.

"We have recalled everyone who was on lay-off and employment is back up to about 500," Beyer said.

Amerex, which is owned by Birmingham-based McWane Inc., is a subcontractor of Oshkosh Corp., a maker of heavy-duty trucks for the military, fire departments and garbage haulers. Last year, Wisconsin-based Oshkosh won a $1 billion Defense Department contract to make a new all-terrain vehicle called the M-ATV, which can carry four soldiers plus a gunner, operate on rough ground and shield occupants from mines and bombs.

Such a vehicle has been in demand on the battlefields of the Middle East, where venturing off-road can mean flipping over, a potential disaster when in combat.

A major part of the vehicle's safety system is the fire suppression gear made by Amerex for Oshkosh. It uses optical sensors and other technology to detect fires and explosions in less than a blink of the eye, then automatically directs a series of jets and hoses to put out the fire with a suppressive substance.

The Amerex system monitors the engine compartment and crew cab. Another company supplies suppression systems for the wheel wells. Beyer said an important part of the technology was settling on a suppressive agent that wouldn't harm the crew.

"Our system puts out engine compartment fires within 30 seconds and crew cab fires in 250 milliseconds," Beyer said. "That is the blink of an eye -- one-quarter of a second."

Beyer said the Trussville-manufactured systems are put into crates and trucked to Oshkosh for installation in the armored vehicles.

Oshkosh has agreed to supply about 2,300 M-ATVs to the military. Another subcontractor handles the armor that protects the vehicle's occupants. The Defense Department has said it expects to deploy as many as 6,000 M-ATVs in the next year or so. That's good news for the economy in Trussville.

"We are the area's largest industrial employer," Beyer said of the growing city about 15 miles northeast of Birmingham.

Amerex has also been good for parent company McWane, which operates iron foundries worldwide that supply underground water pipes and valves and fittings to the waterworks industry. The slow economy has deeply cut into sales, McWane Chief Executive Ruffner Page said.

"Amerex has been a real bright spot for us," Page said. "And the work they are doing is saving lives."